Yesterday I talked about the difference between process (good) and bureaucracy (bad) and defined process as an easy-to-use and flexible method of accomplishing various business functions. How do you create good process? By using completely open communications to foster the information flow; or as Sun Microsystems said in a 1998 advertisement, “Information shall circulate as freely as office gossip.” A good ad for a network and a great philosophy for a company.

I define open communications as: The ability and willingness of all managers, from CEO down, to produce clear, appropriately high-level instructions as needed, and disburse the accurate and complete information needed for their people to do the work in a timely manner.

Open communications are honest, originate at all levels within the company, and flow in all directions—not just top-down. By seeking the active participation of their vendors and customers, the company can cultivate an information flow that provides the basis for more intelligent decisions, increased productivity, lower costs (both internally and externally) and more innovation.

The goal of open communications is to create an enlightened workforce enabling world-class performance, unleashing creativity, and promoting a good working environment.

This philosophy starts with three basic assumptions:

1. People are intelligent, motivated, and want to help their company succeed.
2. People are required to act with initiative.
3. People’s performance is directly impacted by the quality and quantity of the information they receive.

Open communications also means sharing knowledge between employees. The double goal being to encourage employee growth and substantially reduce the time they spend reinventing the wheel.

Open communications means documenting. Good documentation plays a role in every part and process of a company. Without the knowledge of what has been done in the past, it is difficult to fulfill the demands of the present, let alone make viable decisions for the company’s future. Documenting is as much attitude as action, so it is critical to continually develop the mindset among employees that no project is finished until it is documented.

Open communications means making sure that people can easily understand information. Visuals, from a manager’s quick sketch, to the detailed drawings used by engineering to describe a product to manufacturing, are the fastest and easiest way to present information to busy people. Organizational processes and information that can not be represented visually are probably too convoluted and bureaucratic and need to be rethought.

Finally, it’s the responsibility of the top person in the organization to not only walk the open communications talk, but to actively insist that all managers walk it, too.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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